Cauliflower Cheese and Broccoli Soup

A lovely fresh-tasting soup this.

You can choose the cheese here – basically whatever you have: Roquefort, Gorgonzola, Cheddar – but this one’s made with Parmesan simply because it’s always there to hand. Not much cheating, in fact, just a bag of fresh, ready-prepared florets of cauliflower and broccoli, and a tub of fresh ready-grated Parmesan. True vegetarians don't eat Parmesan but you can buy a vegetarian 'style' parmesan from Bookhams.com

NOTE: This recipe is from the book Delia's How to Cheat at Cooking, which was published in 2008; therefore you may have difficulty finding the exact named shop ingredients that were available then. We have kept these recipes on the site, as we know many people have successfully adapted them to what is currently available

Method

In a medium saucepan, melt the butter over a low heat, add the onion and soften it for 5 minutes before adding the cauliflower and broccoli.

Keeping the heat low, put a lid on and let the vegetables sweat for 10 minutes. After that, add the rest of the ingredients and some seasoning, stir well, put the lid back on and keep it at the very gentlest simmer for 20 minutes or until the vegetables are tender.

Now fish out the bay leaf and purée the soup in the saucepan with a stick blender, tasting to check the seasoning. It’s very luscious and creamy, so doesn’t need anything to go with it other than some good bread.

Have you seen...

Italy is rightly famous for its regional food specialities. But how do you know you're buying the real deal?

The key is to look for the distinctive red and yellow PDO mark - Protected Designation of Origin. It’s your guarantee of authentic regional flavour, perfected over centuries and made to exacting traditional standards.